Swearing on what?

Neil MacFarquhar's piece on the first Muslim on Congress exits on this nervous note: Upon what holy writ will Keith Ellison swear when he takes his oath of office? Ellison himself declined to comment for the article, but other news reports assert that the Congressman-elect will in fact take the oath of office with his hand upon the Koran. According to some Chicken Littles, this example of religious diversity will declare an allegiance to sharia over the Constitution and generally result in forty days of rain, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria!

None of these guys cry about officeholders asserting allegiance to "Christian law" when swearing on the Bible, of course.

I hope Ellison's induction is televised. Nationally.

Overall, though, I rather prefer the atheistic take on the whole swearing-on-holy-texts thing:

On one hand, if you deny Muslims the right to swear on their own religious book, then you are clearly setting up a hierarchy of religious beliefs, with Christian oaths being 'better' than those based on other religions.

On the other hand, if you allow Muslims to swear on the Koran, then you may also have to allow people to swear on the holy icons of Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Wiccanism, all the native American religions, and any other religion. Some scholars have advocated just that, with the Monitor article saying "according to law scholars, allowing a range of holy books in oaths of justice may not only lead to a greater feeling of inclusion among religious minorities but also encourage them to tell the truth."

But where does one draw the line about what is a religion and what is not? What if, for example, devotees of the Flying Spaghetti Monster demand the same privilege? [...]

This is another example of the kind of frustrations that arise when we have religious dogmas vying for inclusion and acceptance in the public sphere. All this could be avoided if everyone was simply required to take the secular oath and be done with it, and we had a secular state where nothing in the public sphere referred to any specific religious beliefs. Then people of all faiths could practice their religion freely in their private sphere without causing friction with each other or with the state.

A little too rational for our tastes, I imagine.

(I swear on a stack of Marvel comics that this is cross-posted.)